Equilibrium
by The Hobbit's Rhapsody
Summary: It's not often that Irene can't sleep, but when it happens, one way or another, it's always his fault. — A series of vignettes, spaced from QoA to post-CoK. Spoiler-marked inside.
1. One Side Dreaming

**A/N: All the characters and much of the plot contained herein are the creation and property of the marvelous Megan Whalen Turner. It is with utmost regret that I must admit to having no part in them.**

**(This first vignette is not my favorite. I humbly request that you leave a review anywhere along the way letting me know what you think, and deign to read the later ones even if you think this first one is dull. Many thanks!)**

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I: One Side Dreaming

Spoilers for _The Thief _and the first few chapters of_ The Queen of Attolia._

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The rust-fringed iron of the cell door stood firm between them, but it did not shut out the sound from the other side.

The thief was weeping. Or was it not weeping, so much as muttering? The old tongue of Eddis, it must be; she knew the boy had a scholarly bent, but he sounded delirious, mumbling the same words over and over.

A prayer?

The Eddisians tended to be devout compared with the peoples of Attolia or Sounis. The ambassador had warned her; it was not only politics and custom for them. Even so, the little goatfoot Thief seemed to have an even deeper sense of the divine than anyone else. He spoke as if he expected a reply. A chill settled on her skin, goosebumps prickling until she ran her palms over her arms to smooth them.

It was late. She had a council meeting early the next morning; she should be resting. Why was she even in this part of her palace? Exacting justice for crimes committed against her, especially by a foreigner, was not a usual source of insomnia.

Yet here she was, listening to the ravings of a fevered boy in her prison, instead of sleeping.

She did not know how much longer she stood, hands clammy at her side, ingesting his voice. She knew it was dark, dark enough for the quarter-moon to be well past the apex of its arc across the cloudless sky, when she finally went back up the stairs and made her way to her chambers. Her feet were heavy, and her limbs wanted to do little more than shuffle, but still she forced herself to move with her same trademark grace. In this palace, there was always someone watching.

Phresine, napping at her door, leapt up to attend her queen, but one look at Attolia's face and she pulled back, murmuring a "Goodnight, Your Majesty."

Irene slipped easily from her evening gown into a nightgown, but even as she slipped beneath her heavy down quilts, her exhausted eyes would not close.

She had the Thief of Eddis in her prison.

_Have I exceeded the restraints of tradition? Have I offended the gods?_

_No, Your Majesty._

She recalled the glimmer of the blade against the firelight. She thought of how he'd appealed for mercy, pulled a _please, please_ from a dry throat with abandon, begged as if his heart were breaking. His voice ran around in her mind, niggling at old wounds, poking at something unidentifiable—some part of herself she must have buried long ago, not to recognize it—like a careless child poking at a wasp's nest with a pointed stick.

The image of his bloodless face, lips stained blue, wouldn't leave her. Her muscles were rigid, and she realized her teeth were clamping anxiously. Sleep and peace were as evasive as the Thief had been, but not so easily caught, in the end.

She was nothing. She had taken away his livelihood; his ability to be himself, be a Thief; and yet he still stole from her: stole her unshakable self-assurance, stole away tiny flakes of the stone she had unwittingly molded around her heart. No matter what she did or did not do to him, he made her nothing.


	2. All Those Who Wander

II. All Those Who Wander

Spoilers for_ The Queen of Attolia._

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Her new husband had slipped back to his own chambers, sparing their privacy the long reach of the attendants' prying gossip, leaving her to sleep alone. Yet here she lay awake, weirdly aware of his absence in her bed after only one night.

He was no half-grown boy, no simple goatfoot. She could say this even as she was fairly certain she was the first and only woman with whom he'd ever shared a bed, if his completely unvaunted propensity for blushing lightly at the sight of a woman in a nightdress was at all telling. Then again, perhaps it was only that he'd never bedded a _beautiful_ woman; no one, not even her bitterest enemies, had ever denied her that prestige.

She thought of when the rumors had eagerly gabbed that he was Eddis' lover. She thought of when he had claimed of his own accord to have a sweetheart, and when she'd later realized his identity she had also pieced together that this phantom beloved was none other than that same rival queen. At the time, she had been slightly more inclined than not to believe the rumors, for the Queen of Eddis and her Thief had always been said to be close. Perhaps, though, they only appeared so in the center of the increasingly sparse circle of their less-liked cousins.

Irene doubted now that Eugenides could ever have loved Helen in that way, at least in the time that he'd claimed to. Eddis was all that Attolia was not: kind, blunt, dark, popular, trusted, ugly. Still, a few short months later, Eugenides had forsaken his lifelong right to call her _My Queen_ in favor of crossing the chasms of his nightmares, kneeling at Attolia's feet and taking her hand and embracing her with all her loveless battle wounds. Wounds less obvious than his (her breath caught still at the remembrance of his begging and the thunk of the blade and the stink of cauterizing flesh), but no less real. She knew it was not only duty—Eddis would have hanged her Thief before letting his think for an instant that this union was what she wanted—nor was it simple empathy. She thought there was a touch of empathy in his love, that he understood her brokenness as she witnessed his; but it would take a superhuman man to act as Eugenides had in the wake of what she had done to him, and if it was not duty that moved him it could be nothing else but love.

_Calf love doesn't usually survive amputation, Your Majesty._

No. It didn't.

She sighed, half-angry at the unruliness of her thoughts. Wedding nights, perhaps, were meant to foster unruly thoughts, but it had hardly been a conventional wedding night, and she was a far cry from any ordinary bride, even as a virgin one.

One hand twitched towards the side of the bed that lay empty, clasping vainly around the sheets that still held a bit of his warmth. She shut her eyes, recalling the smoothness of so much skin on skin, sweat and heady foreign scents, her tears, his tears, early shouted epithets (and a glass bauble full of ink, spilling its innards over the wallpaper) and later whispered endearments. It had all been, somehow, impressively straightforward, but no less…sweet. She'd hadn't been expecting _sweet_—and any overly maudlin rose-petal sentimentality had been tempered by their lachrymation—but it had been, all the same.

She thought of how he had settled against her when it was done, his weight against her side both gloriously comfortable and glaringly alien. So few ever touched her freely, and no one could be said to _settle_. Then again Eugenides was particularly well-known for flouting conventionality.

He had been every inch her king.

And she had, against all her expectations, been happy. Utterly happy: emotionally salubrious for perhaps the first time in her stone-masoned life.

They had only rested in the languid, sated aftermath for an hour more before he crept away, reluctant and reverent, with a last lingering kiss. She could still feel his lips against hers. Two hours at most had been the sum total of her wedding night, and yet the sensation of loneliness was already a set thing: in those two hours, something within her had been triggered and the bolt could not be redrawn.

Opening her eyes again, she fixed her gaze absently on the filigree around the rim of the ceiling and wondered if it had been as hard for her Thief to leave her as it was for her to be left.


	3. An Imitation of Symmetry

III. An Imitation of Symmetry

Spoilers for_ The Queen of Attolia _and_ A Conspiracy of Kings._

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He lay stretched out on the couch, arms tucked beneath his head, hiding both healthy hand and bare wrist in a lazy facade of normalcy. She lay crooked into his body, her back following the almost noncurvature of his torso until her head tipped sideways to rest on the top of his ribcage.

It was past time for bed, but pensive thoughts lingered over both of them and it seemed fitting to stay in their day robes for now, though Eugenides had stripped his wrist of its false hand and she had delivered her hair from its jeweled bands. By unvoiced mutual agreement, they reclined away from the bed, trying futilely to while away the restlessness with silence.

Finally she could take it no more, and spoke.

"If Helen refuses to swear allegiance to you, will you really not allow her and Sophos to marry?" Irene found herself at peace, undisturbed by his seeming coldheartedness in making this demand of their fellow sovereign. She knew her husband better than anyone (except perhaps Eddis, but Eugenides had changed very much since he was Eddis' right hand—before she could finish the thought, she was wincing at her own metaphor.) Eugenides was no grasping thief, hungry for rule over other men, no matter what her people thought.

"The welfare of our people must be ranked above matters of the human heart, Irene. As you of all people should know."

"Fortunate are you, then, to have found the safety of both comfortably united in one package," she said drily.

A soft chuckle fled his lips, but in his absence of words she heard him deliberately not reminding her of the price he had paid to win her.

"You've seen the two of them together. Helen longs to be Sounia as much as remain Eddis, and this Thief ceased to frighten her long ago." She could imagine the self-deprecatory quirk of his lips. "Helen is more than prepared. It is Sophos who has not yet stepped into kinghood, who thinks of Eddis as a queen and not _only_ a woman. He thinks she has to keep Eddis whole in order to be Helen."

"Then he is not like you," Irene observed. She had long since understood that Eugenides had never been seeking to be Attolis, husband of Attolia, as much as he wanted to be the husband of Irene. He had seen in her everything that Attolia was not. He had loved all that Attolia was not, and that was why Irene loved him.

"Muscular, no fashion sense, useless at stealth, useless at cursing, even more useless at lying, prone to shoot people who disagree with him even if they happen to be powerful foreign ambassadors—Sophos is nothing at all like me." He was openly smiling now; she could hear it in his voice. "He loves Eddis. They will be fine."

She imagined it: her longtime rival and very new friend, the woman who was adored by everyone who set eyes on her even though she stood like a soldier and had a crooked nose and could at best be said to be plain, kneeling in front of Eugenides, reversing the epithet of their childhood, taking up Attolia's own name for Attolis, calling him _My King._ She imagined Sophos and Helen in white, standing before the altar of the Great Goddess, kissing and blushing and surrounded by tossed flowers and a raucously cheering crowd who adored them.

She imagined what would come of it: imagined all the people of their little world bending the knee to Eddis or Sounis, and in turn to Attolia. Irene and Helen and Sophos, all proud and straight at the heads of their nations, and over them all, a one-handed, barely-bearded Attolis who slouched on his throne and got ink all over everything and complained about the itchiness of his ostentatious royal garments and _was like a mountain lion crouched in the body of a printer's apprentice._

It was the most terrifying picture she had ever envisioned. Yet, somehow, she could not bring herself to feel afraid. She asked him,

"What are you doing to our lands?"

It was a rare and lucky set of circumstances that had given the little peninsula nations their independence. Now Eugenides was, in a clever single stroke, undoing that bastion of abnormality. If it hadn't been so simply massive, a twist of fate that depended on the perfect swings of so many hinges, she might almost think he'd planned it all out to end this way.

But that was impossible.

"Saving them," he said blandly, and she felt him shift so that he could press a kiss into the hollow behind her ear.

Gods damn him, that _was_ all he _ever_ did—save people.


	4. Harmony and Rhythm

**A/N: ****This is the last vignette for this series I currently have planned, but I loved writing this pairing and hope to write more in the future (an aspiration which will hopefully be helped along by the eventual release of the fifth and sixth books!) I've also got another separate oneshot in the works.**

**Also, if I'm allowed to say so, this is far and away my favorite vignette of this fic and the one that was most fun to write, and I would be thrilled if you'd leave a review, kind readers!**

******Contrary to the author's note in chapter one, I do own one character here. It should be obvious which.**

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IV: Harmony and Rhythm

Set post-series: spoilers for_ The Queen of Attolia _and_ A Conspiracy of Kings._

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A harsh wailing, thin and hungry, jolted Irene out of the recesses of dreamless slumber, through the cloudy horizon of hazy half-sleep, and into the galvanized world of the wakeful. She blinked up at the filigreed ceiling and involuntarily sighed.

Eugenides stirred beside her, his good arm flexing beneath her neck where it served as a counterpart to her pillow. Since her pregnancy, they had abandoned any pretense of separation and now shared Attolia's chambers at night, though he still often retreated to his more simply furnished rooms in daylight.

His voice was a sleepy, lightly accented mumble. "Is Persipone awake again?"

"For the third time in as many hours," she affirmed, staring at the water-clock beside their bed with a persistent sense of failure tugging at her stomach. As her husband had not quite yet grasped the nuances of lifting a baby with only one arm, it was she who rolled out of bed and padded over to the crib in the corner opposite the door.

The infant's crying was slightly tamed when she was scooped up by her mother, who shushed her and carried her back to their bed. Eugenides had already moved the pillows so she could sit up and nurse. Even suckling, Persipone whimpered against Irene's breast.

"Shall I sing her a lullaby?" Eugenides asked offhandedly, slender fingers stroking her tiny dark head.

"I think Persipone, and I, and everyone else within a mile's radius would prefer to be spared that experience," she replied wryly, and he let out a mock-affronted chuckle.

For a moment they were silent, watching the attentions of their daughter. Eugenides placed his hand softly along the length of Persipone's body, and Irene marveled, not for the first time, at how tiny she was. How long would that last?

"How long will this last? I'm exhausted," mumbled Eugenides finally. "Did we know a child would be this wearisome? How did we ever come to have a daughter?"

Involuntarily, a light chuckle flitted from her throat. "It's your fault," she murmured.

"Is it? I seem to recall it was you who was endowed by the gods with a womb, and waddled about like a cow for nine months. A beautiful cow," he amended as she turned a cold gaze on him, "radiant as the eastern horizon even in your worst moments." She rolled her eyes, but he kept talking.

"And as I recall, it was you who insisted she share our chambers rather than be attended by a wet nurse."

Her jaw clenched reflexively. The argument against a wet nurse had been not so much an argument as a proclamation, one to which Eugenides had complied with minimal resistance after the first explosive exchange of "Gods, _no_" and shattering inkwells.

Gratefully, she had noticed, not one of his arguments had even obliquely referenced any fear that she would simply be incapable of good mothering. It wasn't that he didn't trust her. He only feared for her ability to be both Attolia and Irene mother-of-an-infant.

After nearly three weeks of motherhood, she was halfway inclined to concede (at least in her own mind) that he might have been right. She had never been so exhausted in all her life. She could not give over the ruling of her land—_lands,_ as Eddis and Sounis had been joined underneath their feet—entirely to Attolis (gods _forbid_). She and Eugenides both had been scraping less than half the sleep they needed each night, and she often left meetings of state to nurse Persipone. Her advisers were frustrated, her barons were skeptical, and her husband was doing his best not to nettle her about her frazzled state. But she would not be moved—her child would be raised by her own mother, and Eugenides' ridiculously hands-on gods could strike her down if she wasn't going to do it to the best of her limited ability.

Her husband soothed her burst of temper with a warm palm on her shoulder beneath her nightdress and a cheek pressed against her hair.

"I wouldn't have our daughter know the absence of her mother for so much as a single day," he said, his voice low against her skin. Both of them knew what it was like to grow up motherless, and it was one of the reasons their argument over the wet nurse had been so brief. He had not the force of will to deny her that which seemed the most reasonable request of all at a primeval level.

An involuntary sniffle left her as Persipone finished nursing and Irene lifted her to her shoulder.

"This treasure is more than sufficient recompense for a few hours of lost sleep," she murmured, still startled at the tenderness she could feel towards their baby. Eugenides adjusted the dropped shoulder of her nightdress and turned to face her fully.

"You're still fuming over how this is somehow my fault," he asserted playfully. Irene leaned back against the headboard, eyes finally shifting from their daughter's tiny face to his, faintly sketched in the starlight from the window behind her.

She clarified, "You maneuvered your way into marrying me."

One eyebrow arched. "I don't follow."

"Sharing the bed is a prerequisite for a baby, Eugenides."

_"Oh._ Well, yes. But you made me king."

"_You_ fell in love with me."

There was a pause. Tipping his head back, her husband finally closed his eyes and smiled. "Trump card, My Queen."

"Indeed, My King."


End file.
